A Dim Light Amid Despair: Humanity's Comeback, Part 1

Commandant Keith Sadies greets the 104th Cadet Corps by verbally demolishing each recruit, a deliberate ritual meant to strip them down before rebuilding them as soldiers. A passing officer notices he skips certain cadets, the ones whose faces already carry the fall of Wall Maria: Eren, Mikasa, Annie, Bertholdt, and Ymir, though Armin gets no such mercy. The tirade halts at Sasha Braus, calmly eating a potato she stole from the kitchen; her offer to split it with the commandant earns her hours of running and a skipped dinner, the latter clearly the harsher blow. Christa later sneaks the exhausted girl some bread, drawing Ymir's suspicion about her motives.

Word spreads that Eren and Armin survived Shiganshina, and cadets crowd the dinner table for firsthand accounts of the Colossal and Armored Titans. The memory of his mother's death turns Eren's stomach mid-story, but he covers it with bravado about joining the Scout Regiment and wiping out every Titan. Jean Kirschtein sneers at the ambition, openly aiming for a comfortable Military Police posting in the interior, and only the dinner bell stops their fight. Jean then embarrasses himself complimenting Mikasa's beautiful hair, and is crushed moments later to hear Eren telling her to cut it.

Aptitude testing brings disaster: Eren cannot hold his balance in the omni-directional mobility harness, flipping upside down attempt after attempt even with coaching from Armin and Mikasa. After Conny and Jean brush him off, he seeks advice from Reiner and Bertholdt, and the four trade stories of their first encounters with Titans before Reiner offers pointers. At his final chance before being shipped to the landfills, Eren steadies himself briefly, then flips again. Sadies orders him to swap rigs with Thomas Wagner, and on working equipment Eren balances effortlessly; his belt had been defective all along. Silently addressing Grisha Jaeger, Sadies acknowledges that the man's son is now a soldier, and Eren is soon matching Mikasa stride for stride in training.

The 104th Cadet Corps begins training under Commandant Keith Sadies, whose intimidation ritual spares only the veterans of Wall Maria's fall. Sasha's potato theft becomes class legend and earns her a run to exhaustion. Eren's Shiganshina history and his vow to destroy the Titans set up his rivalry with Jean. Eren fails the ODM balance test repeatedly, bonds with Reiner and Bertholdt while seeking help, and finally passes when his defective belt is discovered, proving his aptitude was never the problem.

The third episode of Season 1, produced by Wit Studio and Production I.G, adapts the manga chapters One by One and Necessity within the Humanity's Comeback arc. Kiyoshi Fukumoto directed from Hiroshi Seko's script, and it first aired in Japan on April 21, 2013. Crunchyroll's alternate title reads A Dim Light in the Darkness of Despair - Humanity Rises Again (1). The episode's information segment describes ODM training as the leap from moving on a flat plane to full three-dimensional space, demanding endurance, leg strength, spatial awareness, and steady nerves.